A skeptical response to Musk's hyperloop

Re:A skeptical response to Musk's hyperloop by stonemetal on Wednesday August 14, 2013 @10:16AM (#6211613)

but energy consumption for HSR in Spain is on average 73 Watt-hour (263 kJ) per passenger-km (see PDF-page 17 on a UIC paper on the subject of HSR carbon emissions), one fifth as much as Tesla claims. Tesla either engages in fraud or is channeling dodgy research about the electricity consumption of high-speed trains.

Unless the proposed HSR involves moving everyone in California to Spain and using theirs he is the one who is "engaged in fraud or just being dodgy" as he likes to put it according to actual studies of the proposed system energy consumption go as high as 6.5 MJ per passenger KM. As Musk leads with in his document the proposed system is one of the worst HSRs energy and performance wise, quoting the best numbers in existence do not make a compelling counter argument.

http://www.uctc.net/access/37/access37_assessing_hsr.shtml

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Re:A skeptical response to Musk's hyperloop by makomk on Wednesday August 14, 2013 @11:08AM (#6211958)

> actual studies of the proposed system energy consumption go as high as 6.5 MJ per passenger KM

Only if you assume that all the trains will be almost completely empty. I don't know about the US, but I've travelled on some odd routes at low-traffic hours in the UK and it's really fucking rare to see a train with as little as 10% occupancy because the rail companies don't run them.

Come to think of it, most of that was on relatively local lines that Hyperloop's not designed to replace anyway.

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Re:A skeptical response to Musk's hyperloop by stonemetal on Wednesday August 14, 2013 @03:02PM (#6213519)

Sure but the only way to hit Spain's numbers in California is if you have an occupancy above 90%, which seems equally unlikely.

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